27. Holiday on a Desert Island (1)
27. Holiday on a Desert Island (1)
*Chapter 26 has been completely revised. I'd appreciate it if you could read it again...
It had already been three days since I had killed my nemesis, the Hydra.
The island was truly peaceful.
Though there were some zombies wandering around.
Still, since I had dug a pool in front of the dungeon and channeled the acidic poison from the swamp to create an acid swamp, not too many zombies roamed the forest.
"When am I gonna get a bite..."
I sat on a chair made of Hydra bones, resting my chin on my hand and gazing out at the beach. Sitting like this, I felt like a king or something.
Well, maybe it wasn't wrong. Come to think of it, since I'd handed out one-way tickets to the afterlife to the bosses, if I shouted, "I'm now the king of this island!" there wouldn't be anyone to deny it. I'd get treated like a weirdo if I actually shouted it, but who cares? There were only three people here anyway.
Or rather, were there really as many as three of us?
Anyway, I was savoring this brief break.
Had there ever been such a peaceful day during my life on this uninhabited island?
A day with nothing to worry about, no traps to labor over, when simply sitting on a jutting rock and staring blankly at the beach felt good.
Ah, there was a bite.
The moment the fishing rod began to shake, I immediately grabbed it and pulled.
"Oh, it's a big one."
I licked my lips as I looked at the flat-bodied fish. This kind was pretty tasty, even if I didn't know its name.
I didn't need to call it by name anyway.
All I had to do was divide them into safe fish and dangerous fish. Dangerous fish were either poisonous even after cooking or so full of damn bones that eating them was a chore. I hated bony fish.
Picking out every bone one by one was too much trouble. The best fish either had soft enough bones to eat or so few that removing them took no effort.
"Should I head back now?"
I had caught four fish that morning. That was enough for lunch. Reni and I ate a lot, but if we grilled them and made a mixed stew, we could still eat our fill. And for dinner...
"I'll grill a whole bunch of Hydra meat."
Old meat supposedly did not taste good, but Hydra meat was a different story.
Its chewy texture was packed with savory richness while remaining pleasantly lean, enough to make me think it had been born to be eaten. That taste had driven us to endure every inconvenience imaginable and cook it in all kinds of ways for three straight days. There was plenty of it, too, so if we brined it properly, we could keep eating it for another month. We would probably keep eating it for a while.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but I also felt as though my body was overflowing with energy.
Still, more ingredients to deepen the flavor of our meals would have been welcome, so I was taking it easy and fishing while I rested.
"Yohan, did you catch a lot?"
"I caught four."
Her sweet voice came from behind me. I gave an awkward answer and rose from the needlessly elaborate fishing chair. I could have remained seated, but talking to Karina still made me tense. Talking to a beautiful woman was simply too difficult.
I didn't even know what to talk about.
We only managed to hold conversations because Karina kept speaking to me first.
I wondered what Karina thought of me.
I didn't think she disliked me, but I couldn't judge the proper distance between us. Meeting another person after ten years alone also meant spending those ten years losing my sense of how close people were supposed to be.
"What's the name of this fish?"
Karina pointed at the flatfish-looking fish I had caught last.
"I don’t know. I’ve never bothered learning the names of the fish here. A fish only needs to be edible."
"I see..."
The conversation between us died. I could have broken the awkward silence by making a run for it, but both Karina and I knew that fleeing every uncomfortable moment wasn't an answer. So we remained there, watching each other for cues.
"Karina."
"...Ah, yes. What is it?"
"There’s something I’m curious about."
"Something you’re curious about?"
Karina looked at me as though wondering what I meant. Was it unusual for me to ask her a question? Come to think of it, this might have been the first time I had asked Karina anything like this.
"What made you cross the sea by boat?"
"Ah... I was crossing the sea to enroll in Kalon Academy. But then the ship..."
After finally receiving an answer to a question I'd long wondered about but kept postponing because so much had happened, I looked back toward the beach and thought.
So this was before the game began.
The prologue was about attending the entrance ceremony, so the game’s story should not have begun yet... No, we'd already spent more than two weeks here. It might already have started.
So what would happen?
An academy without its main heroine. Karina had major roles throughout the early, middle, and late game, so her absence would leave enormous holes in the plot.
I didn't know who the protagonist was, but I felt sorry for whoever had to survive that hardcore school life without a healer.
If Karina couldn't return like this...
"Um, Yohan?"
"Is there something you want to ask me?"
"How did you end up stranded on this island, Yohan?"
"I don’t know either. I opened my eyes and found myself on this island, then began fighting to survive."
It was one hundred percent true apart from the transmigration. I really had opened my eyes on this island, and from that moment began a deserted-island survival story tragic enough to bring tears to anyone who heard it.
Back then, I thought I wouldn't last even a month, barely surviving day by day, let alone ten years. But now, I had cleared out all the established bosses on the island and was leisurely fishing.
You really never knew how things would turn out.
"Do you not remember your past?"
"I don't remember. But I'm not really bothered by it. Living on this island, that's no longer important anyway."
"...If you get out of here, I'll help you find your past, Yohan."
"There's no need for that."
What did she mean by that? I could not read the intent beneath Karina’s words. Conversation itself was difficult for me. Reni’s simpleminded bluntness was easier to handle, but was someone as complicated as Karina simply harder to talk to?
...More accurately, I stumbled over my words because the person I was talking to was beautiful.
But I couldn't help it. How was I supposed not to stammer when a breathtaking beauty I could barely look away from smiled at me with her eyes and gazed at me with unmistakable warmth? Even the manliest man alive would have stumbled over his words. But I couldn't exactly say, "Wow, you make me so fucking horny..."
"Y-Yohan?"
Ah.
Ah...
Ah......
I kicked off the ground and immediately jumped into the sea.
At this rate, I was going straight to the continent. Right now!
--------------------------------
"Yohan?!"
Karina was alarmed when Yohan suddenly jumped into the sea.
It was bewildering. He had jumped into the sea without warning. Karina was about to call Reni in a panic, but she shut her mouth as she watched Yohan swim away, splashing through the water.
"Hor..."
Unable to bring herself to say the vulgar word aloud, Karina hurriedly closed her mouth and watched Yohan’s retreating back as he swam farther away. Her face burned. No one had ever made such a direct sexual comment to her before.
'He had lived alone for ten years. It was understandable...'
He wasn't just anyone; he was her lifesaver. Karina could understand even if he said such things.
Simply imagining living alone for ten years was so extreme that it was a wonder he hadn't gone mad. And considering what they'd been through in recent weeks, saying something like that wasn't strange.
Karina also sometimes slipped out of the temple to look around town when stress built up. If she thought of his words as an occasional lapse, they were not so strange... or so she convinced herself.
If he had lived alone for ten years, it wasn't strange for him to have such thoughts about a woman...
'What was I thinking?'
Karina looked away from Yohan, now almost out of sight, and toward the blue horizon. As she stared across the endless sea, a sudden thought made her look back at him.
'What did Yohan think of me?'
An ambiguous relationship.
That was how Karina defined her relationship with Yohan: someone she was grateful to for saving her life, yet found difficult to grow closer to than an acquaintance.
Yet he was also the first person since Reni whom she felt she could rely on.
It was hard to call him a friend, but they were too close to be just acquaintances.
In this gray area, Karina often wondered whether she should take a step forward or just stand still and wait.
Karina had never been this close to a man before, so she couldn't judge what to do.
It would have been easier if she could simply draw a firm line, but she didn't want to.
Karina turned and stared toward the place where Yohan had disappeared.
Unlike on the mainland, where countless eyes had prevented her from moving freely, on this uninhabited island only her own feelings mattered.
'Time would sort it out, wouldn’t it?'
Whether they escaped the island or not, they would be living in close quarters for a long time.
Karina picked up the bucket with the flopping fish and turned around.
"I only hope you won’t be gone too long..."